Collected Stories

by Jorge Luis Borges

To the Jews the appearance of one’s Double was not an omen of imminent death. On the contrary, it was proof of having attained prophetic powers. This is how it is explained by Gershom Scholem. A legend recorded in the Talmud tells the story of a man who, in search of God, met himself.

  In the story ‘William Wilson’ by Poe, the Double is the hero’s conscience. He kills it and dies. In a similar way, Dorian Gray in Wilde’s novel stabs his portrait and meets his death. In Yeats’s poems the Double is our other side, our opposite, the one who complements us, the one we are not nor will ever become.

  Plutarch writes that the Greeks gave the name other self to a king’s ambassador.

  The Eastern Dragon

  The Dragon has the ability to assume many shapes, but these are inscrutable. Generally, it is imagined with a head something like a horse’s, with a snake’s tail, with wings on its sides (if at all), and with four claws, each furnished with four curved nails. We read also of its nine resemblances: its horns are not unlike those of a stag, its head that of a camel, its eyes those of a devil, its neck that of a snake, its belly that of a clam, its scales those of a fish, its talons those of an eagle, its footprints those of a tiger, and its ears those of an ox. There are specimens of the Dragon that lack ears and hear with their horns. It is customary to picture them with a pearl, which dangles from their necks and is a symbol of the sun. Within this pearl lies the Dragon’s power. The beast is rendered helpless if its pearl is stolen from it.

  History traces the earliest emperors back to Dragons. Their teeth, bones, and saliva all possess medicinal qualities. According to its will, the Dragon can become visible or invisible. In springtime it ascends into the skies; in the fall it dives down into the depths of the seas. Some Dragons lack wings yet fly under their own impetus. Science distinguishes several kinds. The Celestial Dragon carries on its back the palaces of the gods that otherwise might fall to earth, destroying the cities of men; the Divine Dragon makes the winds and rains for the benefit of mankind; the Terrestrial Dragon determines the course of streams and rivers; the Subterranean Dragon stands watch over treasures forbidden to men. The Buddhists affirm that Dragons are no fewer in number than the fishes of their many concentric seas; somewhere in the universe a sacred cipher exists to express their exact number. The Chinese believe in Dragons more than in any other deities because Dragons are frequently seen in the changing formations of clouds. Similarly, Shakespeare has observed, ‘Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish.’

  The Dragon rules over mountains, is linked to geomancy, dwells near tombs, is connected with the cult of Confucius is the Neptune of the seas and appears also on terra firma.

  The Sea-Dragon Kings live in resplendent underwater palaces and feed on opals and pearls. Of these Kings there are five: the chief is in the middle, the other four correspond to the cardinal points. Each stretches some three or four miles in length; on changing position, they cause mountains to tumble. They are sheathed in an armour of yellow scales, and their muzzles are whiskered. Their legs and tail are shaggy, their forehead juts over their flaming eyes, their ears are small and thick, their mouths gape open, their tongues are long, and teeth sharp. Their breath boils up and roasts whole shoals of fishes. When these Sea Dragons rise to the ocean surface, they cause whirlpools and typhoons; when they take to the air they blow up storms that rip the roofs off the houses of entire cities and flood the countryside. The Dragon Kings are immortal and can communicate among themselves, without recourse to words, in spite of any distance that separates them. It is during the third month that they make their annual report to the upper heavens.

  The Eater of the Dead

  There is a strange literary genre which, spontaneously, has sprung up in various lands and at various times. This is the manual for the guidance of the dead through the Other World. Heaven and Hell by Swedenborg, the writings of the Gnostics, the Tibetan Bardo Thödol (which, according to Evans-Wentz, should be translated as ‘Liberation by Hearing on the After-Death Plane’), and the Egyptian Book of the Dead do not exhaust the possible examples. The similarities and differences of the latter two books have attracted the attention of esoteric scholarship; for us, let it be enough to recall that in the Tibetan manual the Other World is as illusory as this one, while to the Egyptians it has a real and objective existence.

  In both texts there is a Judgment Scene before a jury of deities, some with the heads of apes; in both, a symbolical weighing of evil and good deeds. In the Book of the Dead, a heart and a feather are weighed against each other, ‘the heart representing the conduct or conscience of the deceased and the feather righteousness or truth.’ In the Bardo Thödol, white pebbles and black pebbles are placed on either side of the balance. The Tibetans have demons or devils who lead the condemned to the place of purgation in a hell-world; the Egyptians have a grim monster attending their wicked, an Eater of the Dead.

  The dead man swears not to have caused hunger or sorrow, not to have killed or to have made others kill for him, not to have stolen the food set aside for the dead, not to have used false weights, not to have taken the milk from a baby’s mouth, not to have driven livestock from their pasturage, not to have netted the birds of the gods.

  If he lies, the forty-two judges deliver him to the Eater, ‘who has the head of a crocodile, the trunk of a lion, and the hinder parts of a hippopotamus.’ The Eater is assisted by another animal Babaí, of whom we know only that he is frightening and that Plutarch identifies him with the Titan who fathered the Chimera.

  The Eight-Forked Serpent

  The Eight-Forked Serpent of Koshi is prominent in the mythical cosmogony of Japan. It was eight-headed and eight-tailed; its eyes were red as the winter cherry, and pine trees and mosses grew on its back, while firs sprouted on each of its heads. As it crawled, it stretched over eight valleys and eight hills, and its belly was always flecked with blood. In seven years this beast had devoured seven maidens, the daughters of a king, and in the eighth year was about to eat up the youngest daughter, named Princess Comb-Ricefield. The Princess was saved by a god who bore the name of Brave-Swift-Impetuous-Male. This knight built a circular enclosure of wood with eight gates and eight platforms at each gate. On the platforms he set tubs of rice beer. The Eight-Forked Serpent came and, dipping a head into each of the tubs, gulped down the beer and was soon fast asleep. Then Brave-Swift-Impetuous-Male lopped the heads. A river of blood sprang from the necks. In the Serpent’s tail a sword was found that to this day commands veneration in the Great Shrine of Atsuta. These events took place on the mountain formerly named Serpent-Mountain and now called Eight-Cloud Mountain. The number eight in Japan is a magic number and stands for many, just as forty (‘When forty winters shall besiege thy brow’) did in Elizabethan England. Japanese paper currency still commemorates the killing of the Serpent. It is superfluous to point out that the redeemer married the redeemed, as in Hellenic myth Perseus married Andromeda.

  In his English rendering of the cosmogonies and theogonies of old Japan (The Sacred Scriptures of the Japanese), Post Wheeler also records analogous legends of the Hydra of Greek myth, of Fafnir from the Germanic, and of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, whom a god made drunk with blood-red beer so that mankind would be saved from annihilation.

  The Elephant that Foretold

  the Birth of the Buddha

  Five centuries before the Christian era, Queen Maya, in Nepal, had a dream that a white Elephant, which dwelled on the Golden Mountain, had entered her body. This visionary beast was furnished with six tusks. The King’s soothsayers predicted that the Queen would bear a son who would become either ruler of the world or the saviour of mankind. As is common knowledge, the latter came true.

  In India the Elephant is a domestic animal. White stands for humility and the number six is sacred, corresponding to the six dimensions of space: upward, downward, forward, back, left, and right.

  The Eloi and the Morlocks

  The hero of the novel The Time Machine, which a young wri
ter Herbert George Wells published in 1895, travels on a mechanical device into an unfathomable future. There he finds that mankind has split into two species: the Eloi, who are frail and defenseless aristocrats living in idle gardens and feeding on the fruits of the trees; and the Morlocks, a race of underground proletarians who, after ages of labouring in darkness, have gone blind, but driven by the force of the past, go on working at their rusted intricate machinery that produces nothing. Shafts with winding staircases unite the two worlds. On moonless nights, the Morlocks climb up out of their caverns and feed on the Eloi.

  The nameless hero, pursued by Morlocks, escapes back into the present. He brings with him as a solitary token of his adventure an unknown flower that falls into dust and that will not blossom on earth until thousands and thousands of years are over.

  The Elves

  The Elves are of Nordic origin. Little is known about what they look like, except that they are tiny and sinister. They steal cattle and children and also take pleasure in minor acts of devilry. In England, the world ‘elflock’ was given to a tangle of hair because it was supposed to be a trick of the Elves. An Anglo-Saxon charm, which for all we know may go back to heathen times, credits them with the mischievous habit of shooting, from afar, miniature arrows of iron that break the surface of the skin without a trace and are at the root of sudden painful stitches. In the Younger Edda, a distinction is noted between Light Elves and Dark: ‘The Light Elves are fairer than a glance of the sun, the Dark Elves blacker than pitch.’ The German for nightmare is Alp; etymology traces the word back to ‘elf,’ since it was commonly believed in the Middle Ages that Elves weighed heavily upon the breast of sleepers, giving them bad dreams.

  An Experimental Account of What Was Known,

  Seen, and Met by Mrs. Jane Lead in London in 1694

  Among the many writings of the blind English mystic Jane Lead (or Leade) is to be found The Wonders of God’s Creation manifested in the variety of Eight Worlds, as they were known experimentally unto the Author (London, 1695). About this time, as Mrs Lead’s fame spread throughout Holland and Germany, her work was done into Dutch by an eager young scholar, H. van Ameyden van Duym. But later on when, due to the jealousies of her disciples, the authenticity of certain manuscripts was disputed, it became necessary for the van Duym versions to be retranslated into English. On page 340 (10 B) of the Eight Worlds, we read:

  Salamanders have their appointed Dwelling in Fire; Sylphs in the Air; Nymphs in the flowing Waters; and Gnomes in Earthen-burrows, but the creature whose substance is Bliss is everywhere at home. All sounds, even to the roaring of Lions, the screeching of the nightly Owls, the laments and groans of those entrapped in Hell, are as sweet Musick to her. All odours, even to the foulest stench of Corruption, are to her as the delight of roses and Lilies. All savours, even to the banquet-table of the Harpys of heathen lore, are as Sweet loaves and spiced Ale. Wandering at noon through the Waste-Places of the world, it seems to her she is refreshed by Canopies of flocking Angels. The earnest seeker will look for her in All places, however dim and sordid, of this world or in the seven others. Thrust a keen Sword-blade through her and it will seem as a fountain of Divine and Pure pleasure. These eyes, by Translation, have been given to see her ways; and an equal gift as revealed by Wisdom is sometimes granted the Child.

  The Fairies

  They meddle magically in human affairs, and their name is linked to the Latin word latum (fate, destiny). It is said that the Fairies are the most numerous, the most beautiful, and the most memorable of the minor supernatural beings. They are not restricted to a particular place or particular period. Ancient Greeks, Eskimos, and Red Indians all tell stories of heroes who have won the love of these creatures of the imagination. Such fortunes hold their perils; a Fairy, once its whim is satisfied, may deal death to its lovers.

  In Ireland and Scotland ‘the people of Faery’ are assigned underground dwelling places, where they confine children and men whom they have kidnapped. Believing that the flint arrowheads they dig up in the fields once belonged to Fairies. Irish farmers endow these objects with unfailing medical powers. Yeats’s early tales abound in accounts of village people among the Fairies. In one a countrywoman tells him that she did not believe either in Hell or in ghosts. Hell was an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and the ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go ‘trapsin’ about the earth’ at their own free will; ‘but there are faeries and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels.’

  Fairies are fond of song and music and the colour green.

  Yeats notes that ‘The [little] people and faeries in Ireland are sometimes as big as we are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three feet high.’ At the end of the seventeenth century a Scots churchman, the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle, wrote a work entitled The Secret Commonwealth; or an Essay on the Nature and Actions of the Subterranean (and for the most part) Invisible People heretofore going under the name of Faunes and Fairies, or the lyke, among the Low Country Scots, as they are described by those who have the second sight. In 1815, Sir Walter Scott had the book reprinted. Of Mr Kirk it is told that the Fairies snatched him away because he had revealed their mysteries. On the seas off Italy, especially in the Strait of Messina, the fata morgana contrives mirages to confuse sailors and lure them aground.

  Fastitocalon

  The Middle Ages attributed to the Holy Ghost the composition of two books. The first was, as is well known, the Bible; the second, the whole world, whose creatures had locked up in them moral teachings. In order to explain these teachings, Physiologi, or Bestiaries, were compiled in which accounts of birds and beasts and fishes were laid over with allegorical applications. Out of an Anglo-Saxon bestiary, we take the following text, translated by R. K. Gordon:

  Now by my wit I will also speak in a poem, a song, about a kind of fish, about the mighty whale. He to our sorrow is often found dangerous and fierce to all seafaring men. The name Fastitocalon is given him, the floater on ocean streams. His form is like a roughstone, as if the greatest of seaweeds, girt by sand-banks, were heaving by the water’s shore, so that seafarers suppose they behold some island with their eyes; and then they fasten the highprowed ships with cables to the false land, tie the sea steeds at the water’s edge, and then undaunted go up into that island. The ships remain fast by the shore, encompassed by water. Then, wearied out, the sailors encamp, look not for danger. On the island they kindle fire, build a great blaze; the men, worn out, are in gladness, longing for rest. When he, skilled in treachery, feels that the voyagers are set firmly upon him, are encamped, rejoicing in the clear weather, then suddenly the ocean creature sinks down with his prey into the salt wave, seeks the depths, and then delivers the ships and the men to drown in the hall of death.

  He, the proud voyager, has another habit, yet more wondrous. When on the ocean hunger harries him . . . then the warden of the ocean opens his mouth, his lips wide. A pleasant smell comes from within, so that other kinds of fish are betrayed thereby; they swim swiftly to where the sweet smell issues forth. They enter there in a thoughtless throng, till the wide jaw is filled. Then suddenly the fierce jaws snap together, enclosing the plunder. Thus is it for every man who . . . lets himself be snared by a sweet smell, a false desire, so that he is guilty of sins against the King of glory.

  This same story is told in the Arabian Nights, in St Brendan’s Legend, and in Milton’s Paradise Lost, which shows us the whale ‘slumbering on the Norway foam.’ Professor Gordon tells us that ‘In earlier versions the creature was a turtle and was named Aspidochelone. In course of time the name became corrupted, and the whale replaced the turtle.’

  Fauna of Chile

  Our chief authority on animals incubated by the Chilean imagination is Julio Vicuña Cifuentes, whose Myths and Superstitions collects a number of legends drawn from oral tradition. All of the following extracts but one are taken from this work. The Calchona is recorded in Zorobabel R
odríguez’ Dictionary of Chileanisms, published in Santiago de Chile in 1875.

  The Alicanto is a nocturnal bird that seeks its food in veins of gold and silver. The variety that feeds on gold may be identified by the golden light that gleams from its wings when it runs with them open (for it cannot fly); the silver-feeding Alicanto is known, as one might expect, by a silvery light.

  The fact that the bird is flightless is not due to its wings, which are perfectly normal, but to the heavy metallic meals that weigh down its crop. When hungry it runs swiftly; when gorged it is hardly able to crawl.

  Prospectors or mining engineers believe their fortune is made if they are lucky enough to have an Alicanto for a guide, since the bird may lead them to the discovery of hidden ore. Nevertheless, the prospector should be very careful, for, if the bird suspects it is being followed, it dims its light and slips away in the dark. It may also suddenly change its path and draw its pursuer towards a chasm.

  The Calchona is a kind of Newfoundland dog woollier than an unshorn ram and more bearded than a billy goat. White in colour, it chooses dark nights to appear before mountain travelers, snatching their lunch baskets from them and muttering sullen threats; it also scares horses, hunts down outlaws, and works all sorts of evil.

  The Chonchón has the shape of a human head; its ears, which are extremely large, serve as wings for its flight on moonless nights. Chonchónes are supposed to be endowed with all the powers of wizards. They are dangerous when molested, and many fables are told about them. There are several ways to bring these flying creatures down when they pass overhead intoning their ominous tué, tué, tué, the only sign that betrays their presence, since they are invisible to anyone not a wizard. The following are judiciously advised: to recite or sing a prayer known only to a few who stubbornly refuse to divulge it; to chant a certain twelve words twice over; to mark a Solomon’s seal on the ground; and lastly, to spread open a waistcoat and lay it out in a specified way. The Chonchón falls, flapping its wings furiously, and cannot lift itself again no matter how hard it tries until another Chonchón comes to its aid. Generally, the incident does not conclude here, for sooner or later the Chonchón wreaks its vengeance on whomever has mocked at it.